Yeah I completely agree, that is basically what I tried to say too. Someone else said, he dislikes the linear dungeons compared to the more open non-singlegroup-instanced dungeons in lets say EQ. I agree with that too, but I would go further, I dislike the linear leveling process. I fucking loathe questing from level 1-50. I feel like walking a way someone else set out for me. I dont look left or right, I just follow what the man with the ? tells me to do. That is a very poor kind of RPG, the kind were I play the role of the retarded servant for some guy who wants 30 of something. There is no reason to learn a specific area, because I am done with 30 of something I never visit that area again. This isn't only true for dungeons, it is true for every part of leveling.
EQ Never
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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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It's terrible. We should be exploring every area of the world. When and I come across a new town I don't want to see a bunch of ? on top of heads. Let's get back to exploring the whole town and talking to all it's NPC's to find a quest.
As for open world dungeons.. I think a way to reuse some of them is to have the mobs in them grow in levels the longer they go unexplored. What once was a level 15ish dungeon becomes a level 50 because there has been no player activity to keep the numbers down. Put in a few local quests that pop because of the change. Once it's cleared it can be reset to it's original level. I think this can also be applied to raid mobs.. Certainly when they become considered old world raid mobs. It seem that companies view a lot of our ideas as cool but a waste of Dev time. I know the open world dungeons are considered a waste of time by some Devs. So why not add that extra feature to keep the dungeons relevant forever and add multiple experiences.
First person can be enjoyable and truly immersive, but nobody has really emphasized it and done it REALLY well yet in the MMO scene. So I feel like that's something that can be explored.
Mirrors Edge isn't an mmo but it was a step in the right direction. You could see your body/limbs and the camera movements resembled what you would really see when you do a roll or a slide, or whatever. Obviously you aren't going to be sliding around in mmo's and doing acrobatic jumps and stuff but the camera movement is the point here. For instance, what if a mob casts an aoe knockback on you and you fall to the ground, if you did the camera movements right it would be pretty damn neat and a very interesting perspective.
Mirrors Edge isn't an mmo but it was a step in the right direction. You could see your body/limbs and the camera movements resembled what you would really see when you do a roll or a slide, or whatever. Obviously you aren't going to be sliding around in mmo's and doing acrobatic jumps and stuff but the camera movement is the point here. For instance, what if a mob casts an aoe knockback on you and you fall to the ground, if you did the camera movements right it would be pretty damn neat and a very interesting perspective.
It is a cool idea and could definatly work for raidcontent, in regards to group dungeons I just don't know if it wouldn't block alot of lowlevel content for lower levels. Also if the pace of leveling is slow enough and leveling isn't equal questing those anymore I could image those dungeons seeing enough traffic.
I also wouldnt mind instancing in another way, like you have a big server and each dungeon has a maximum player amount, say i.E. sebilis can sustain 40 players max. The moment you get to 40+ players a second sebilis instance opens. That way you dont have like 50 instances and in everyone 1 group camps fungus king, you are still forced to take different, maybe less desireable camps. However you still can provide open dungeons for alot of players. In addition maybe you work with dynamic experience boni. Like you have enough different open dungeons to sustain all players, but people like sebilis over chardok or charasis. So the game sees that sebisis is overcrowded and charasis empty and slowly increases the experience gained.
First person, for the most part, does not work well in an MMORPG because you can't see yourself. MMOs are social games and full of epeen. You want to show off your latest gear and accomplishment to other people. In Skyrim, you don't give a shit what you look like because, in the end, there is no one else to look at you. This is also the reason why there is a character portrait in your UI. A lot of people like to see themselves and be reminded.
I agree that a far-zoomed out third person perspective can help shrink the world and take you out of it. The best compromise is an over the shoulder, closer look like Defiance or Gears of War.
I agree that a far-zoomed out third person perspective can help shrink the world and take you out of it. The best compromise is an over the shoulder, closer look like Defiance or Gears of War.
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Ahn'Qiraj Raider
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It would not block because the itemization of such an event would have higher players wanting in. Chances are it would be cleared the day it changed to a high level dungeon.
Totally disagree. I don't want to see myself. I want to BE myself, in the world I'm exploring. EQ 1st person or bust.
You could always do first person as a primary means of enjoying the game to enjoy "the experience". Then allow 3rd person camera modes for when you want to see yourself or for those that choose to play in 3rd person the whole time. Sort of like EQ did, except EQ didn't really do first person to its fullest potential like I was describing above.
There are different types of games that allow different types of play. When you have a game where characters get more powerful as they level, where characters aren't fully capable until max level; then you will have games that make you level quickly. Fast leveling MMORPGs came from the direct response of EQ being so fucking slow. It evolved from people not wanting to spend 20 hours in one spot to get 1 level. So you then got quest leveling. Quest leveling was a tool developers created so they could pace a characters progression. They knew exactly what level you were and approximately how fast you could get there.
That tool, of course became the new norm and was inflated. Now they just shit quests into a map like EQ shit mobs onto a map to be grinded. It went from a crafted experience, to something that just had to be and the more the better.
If you want a slow leveling game, then you're going to have to craft a game that quickly allows you to hit max power, then the slow game is expanding your power horizontally. No one (and this is the no one in a larger sense) wants to play a game for 3-4 months before their character hits their full potential. With all the online options out there, people won't have the patience to do this.
Developers should also focus on creating a game that allows for a majority of their content to be used by the most people. That means no levels or faster leveling. Less "leveling" zones and more "max level" zones.
I would prefer a design concept that works with a specific ideology. For example, I would say "no instancing" period, no exceptions. This would force new non-lazy ideas and innovations. The moment you say "ok no instances, EXCEPT FOR." you stick the camel's nose under the tent and you can never get it out. There are ways to modernize "non-instanced-games" for 2013 but nobody is working on it.
That's terrible design theory though because you're now forcing yourself into a corner. You still have to deal with server and network capabilities. You still have to deal with over population of content. If a dungeon normally can be done with 5 people, then you open up the space so multiple groups can do it and you find that up to 3 groups can simultaneously be in that space and only occasionally bump elbows. 5 Groups has you competing for content and 8 groups completely floods the zone so that no one is doing anything.
Once you create content that artificially creates losers (missing a spawn, not tagging a mob fast enough etc.) you are then crafting a gaming experience that turns people away. It's one thing to design content where there is a challenge that people can lose to. It's another thing to create content that needlessly creates that experience (this is also assuming the content is not designed to be a competitive target like EQ raid targets). Even so, there is probably a limit to how much losing a player finds fun. For example, playing in this dungeon with 5 groups can be fun as long as there are ample respawning targets to keep you occupied and competing for. But once you hit 8 groups and all your doing is running around meta gaming everything just to play the game is silly.
There are solutions like spawn timers, dynamically scaling content etc are solutions that can work but the real estate can only handle so many bodies.
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I really didn't run into a whole lot of over crowding in EQ. Someone would do a group check and that would be that. Typically the players policed themselves and the people who didn't respect it normally got called out on it. If an area is full you should just move to another area.. The game should support multiple dungeons at the same levels. Making everything accessible at all times isn't the answer either. It just adds more of the same where every player is equal. Before people would be proactive about getting in one of those groups. Sometimes their prior actions would eliminate them from even being considered depending on who's in the group. Did they act like an ass, wipe the group, bad player, etc.. Games need to stop worrying about the "losers." I know there is money at stake but there is something to also to be said about different paths in the leveling process. So you missed the dungeon this time around and leveled up in a different one. Come back and hit it with an alt or higher level. Knowing that your max level in a game but still haven't experienced 40% of the content says something for replay-ability.
sigh... reading this thread reminds me an awful lot ofanother forumwith a ton of great ideas / discussions.
Yeah but you have to admin playerbase per server scaled up alot. Meaning you need like 5-10 times the space per server for people to camp compared to what EQ needed. So either you instance in some kind or you invest in developing more space. Or you make more servers of course.
What you're describing and seem to be against is a social community based around conflict, alliances and commerce. Limited resources facilitate human interaction. That's what's missing from MMOs. You want winners and losers. You want an upper class, middle class and a lower class. What you don't want is equality because the only thing that facilitates is boredom. Your very basic and vapid description of running out of things to do in a dungeon is so basic and irrelevant I don't even know where to beginning. There are plenty of ways to facilitate content for everybody without instancing. All instancing does is create moral hazards in gameplay that leads to a complete degeneration of social interaction and the bypassing of game content leading to boredom.
I agree, but you have also to deal with providing enough room for people to be still interested. Having only enough spots for 30% of the people solves realy nothing. So you need to provide just as much content for people not to be able to cherrypick and interact, but still be able to do something useful.
Quineloe
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I'll quote myself, even though you quoted it:
There is only so much competition a player can take before he says fuck it and leaves. When you have 6 entities going after 4 different things, then it's fun as long as you're not sitting on your ass for 20 minutes in between waiting. However when you have 10 entities going after 4 things, it's stupid and not fun.
Of course you could just make more content, but that costs time and money. So in a perfect world you have multiple environments all over the place. Depending on the scope of the game, need for grouping vs. public/soft grouping, travel time and you have a whole new set of issues you have to deal with. If you use GW2 methodology, then no problem. Click a button and you're there, and you don't even need a group you just join in the fun. If you're playing EQ theory, then you have to spend time hoofing it over to a new area, find a group and then jump in. That takes additional time and you're not guaranteed a spot.
If you create enough hurdles for a player to play your game, that player will end up just playing something else. There's a fine line of immersion and ease of access, and that line moves all over the place depending on who you are. You can make an argument for world travel and big maps and no quick travel, but you have to create tools so players don't waste their time traveling. You can make a player spend an hour walking to another location just to find it equally crowded or completely empty.